Multiprice coin operated vending machines have long been a part of everyday life. Food, cigarettes, and various other items have been dispensed (vended) from such machines by the insertion of coins into a slot in the machine and the selection of the item desired by depressing a button or the like.
The normal procedure for collecting the proceeds from vending machines has been accomplished by periodic collections of the coins in the machine by a collector. While collection of the proceeds should supposedly directly relate to the amount of money taken in by the machine, in fact pilferage or machine malfunction e.g., dispensing of the wrong amount of change, may yield less cash to the machine owner than was actually taken in by the vending machine.
Accordingly, a need has developed to provide an up to date period balance of the cash collected by each vending machine so as to detect pilferage or machine malfunction as well as to speed up collections and reduce accounting time.
The present invention provides such a device, termed a totalizer, which will keep track of all cash which has been actually received by the machine for the dispensing of goods. The totalizer herein in its most preferred form has a non-resettable read-out so that the effects of tampering are kept to a minimum.